Neil Gaiman Returning to ‘Doctor Who’; New Images of ‘Dinosaurs on a Spaceship’

The Doctor Who season seven premiere, “Asylum of the Daleks,” elicited a mixed response from some fans and critics (read our Doctor Who season seven premiere review) – with a few of story beats that were off-putting for certain longtime viewers. However, many Whovians still enjoyed the episode and are eagerly looking forward to the remaining season seven chapters.

As we mentioned in our recent Doctor Who Viewing Guide feature, it’s a great time to get started with the series – especially considering executive producer Steven Moffat has promised that this season will be the biggest and most exciting installment in the near-50 year old show. To that point, we’ve got a number of intriguing season seven details – including the return of celebrated comic book writer, novelist, and screenwriter, Neil Gaiman, as well as several new new images and a trailer for the highly-anticipated “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” episode.

Gaiman is well known for a myriad of reasons – including The Sandman comic book series, Stardust and Coraline novels (later adapted into feature films by directors Matthew Vaughn and Henry Selick, respectively), as well as one of the most memorable episodes in Doctor Who history, “The Doctor’s Wife” (originally titled “The House of Nothing”) – which, paired with intriguing standalone plot points, provides canon backstory for The Doctor’s TARDIS (a time machine/spacecraft).

The episode recently won Gaiman a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in the Short Form category beating out two other Doctor Who nominees, ”The Girl Who Waited” (written by Tom MacRae) and ”A Good Man Goes to War” (written by Steven Moffat) as well as the Community episode ”Remedial Chaos Theory” (written by Dan Harmon and Chris McKenna) and “The Drink Tank’s Hugo Acceptance Speech” (from Christopher J. Garcia and James Bacon).

During his acceptance speech, Gaiman took an opportunity to tease viewers with confirmation that he’s already writing a future episode of the iconic sci-fi series:

“Only a fool or a mad man would try to do it again… so I’m on the third draft.”

As for when Who (along with Gaiman) fans will get to see the episode, as well as what they might be able to expect, io9 managed to prod the famed writer into revealing that his next Doctor Who installment is scheduled for the second half of season seven (which will air in 2013). That said, much like “The Doctor’s Wife,” which was pushed from season five to season six (for a bigger budget), the next Gaiman episode is expected to be similarly expensive – and could, as the writer pointed out, be bumped into a future Who season. As a result, it may be awhile before we learn any concrete story details – plus whether or not the episode could feature a flesh and blood return of the TARDIS matrix.

In the meantime, fans of the series can whet their appetite for more Doctor Who with a sneak peek at the next episode of the show, “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” with a new trailer and revealing images below:

The Doctor Who season seven premiere drew solid numbers with a day-and-date launch in three markets (United Kingdom, Canada, and the U.S.) – managing to secure 6.4 million viewers in the U.K. alone.

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I really enjoyed the season premiere of Dr. Who and I can honestly say that I have also grown to really like Matt Smith as The Doctor. David Tennant is still my favorite Doctor, but Smith has really grown into the role. Can’t wait to see the next episode!

I am SO glad to hear this! The Doctor’s Wife is probably my favorite episode of Doctor Who, period. I can’t wait to see what Neil Gaiman comes up with this time around. This whole seventh season is shaping up to be pretty great. It makes me really sad that I don’t get to watch the episodes live anymore, since I work late nights at Dish. Thanks to my Hopper, though, I can look forward to coming home from work every Saturday to a brand new episode of Doctor Who. I’m definitely excited about seeing some dinosaurs on a spaceship this weekend!

Read the comments in our review – it wasn’t just Anthony that had problems with the episode. Like I said in the article, most people enjoyed it but I’ve seen other reviewers (and seen plenty of commenters) that thought the episode wasn’t one of the best.

As a result, a “mixed response” from “some” fans and critics still seems fair to me.

The Doctor’s Wife is a great episode mainly because of its premise. Not saying any writer could have developed it as well, but he needs a good starting point to get similarly stellar results. Def good news anyway.

IMO Doctor Who really needs to up it’s game. It’s weird, Stephen Moffat wrote some of the best scripts when RTD was in charge. I was expecting much, much better. Since Stephen Moffat has taken over things really have started to lose it.

I really loved Matt Smith’s first episode as the Doctor, but now I sorta cringe watching him. He can be a great Doctor because I’ve seen glimpses of it. But at the moment he’s just a buffoon.

That “Asylum of the Daleks” episode was pretty awful. Why is it whenever they try and go epic, or promise sooo much, does it fall so flat and seem like a real missed opportunity?

I agree with you about Steve Moffatt. He has written some of the best doctor eps. THey were scary, very entertaining and they actually made you THINK. He has written some good ones since he took over as head writter but it seems he gets a bit overwhelmed being in charge of a whole series. But last seasons premier 2 episodes were really good so i still have faith in moffatt that this season will be really good.